SpaceX plans to launch its massive Starship rocket early Monday with the goal of reaching orbit with the spacecraft for the first time.
According to the SpaceX website, the 75-minute launch window begins at 8:15 a.m. ET, or 7:15 a.m. local time, from the city of Starbase, Texas.
The Federal Aviation Administration told CNBC via email that it issued a “license authorization for launch and re-entry operations of SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Flight 14” on September 26. With Starship’s 14th test flight, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense company also plans to deploy 26 of its new Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship is essential to SpaceX’s expansion plans. The company is counting on the giant rocket to grow its Starlink, or Connectivity, business, which was its largest and only profitable segment in the second quarter. SpaceX now operates around 11,000 active satellites in orbit, compared to around 650 for its competitor Eutelsat OneWeb.
During SpaceX’s August earnings conference call, Musk said, “It’s not out of the question that at some point Starlink will provide the majority of the world’s Internet, at least in the countries where we are licensed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries.” »
SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO on record and is now valued at around $2 trillion.
SpaceX designed its Starship Super Heavy rocket and booster to be fully reusable and able to put more cargo into orbit at a lower cost than any previous spacecraft. None of the previous 13 test flights were intended to go into orbit, but with the 14th flight, SpaceX hopes Starship will circle the planet.
The company is preparing Starship for a major NASA test flight next year and intends to use the rocket to return American astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said at the All-In Summit earlier this month that the company also plans to use Starship to put “supercomputers in space,” launching “AI computing satellites” into orbit in 2027.
The company’s new v3 satellites, produced at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, are equipped with solar panels that generate twice as much power as previous generations. They are also larger and designed to be more powerful, transmitting data faster than previous versions to Starlink subscribers.
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